July 2020 - Nighthaunt Army

Hello dear reader!

Self-isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year proved to be a productive time for my hobby. In addition to finishing nearly 1000 points of Imperial Fists I managed to build and paint the bulk of a 1000 points of Nighthaunt. In both cases I am still 2-5 models away from being fully finished but I'm super pleased with how the armies turned out, and really enjoyed painting forces of this size where you do a few basic troops, a few elite, and a single larger centerpiece.

These Nighthaunt were my first time using the new GW contrast paints and I enjoyed the experience, both the red and blue/turquoise components were put down using a few layers of contrast over a cream off-white base color. I made the red pop a bit more with some shading and higlighting, but it still allowed me to crack out a batch of 30 chainrasps in a single go without losing my mind.

For the Black Coach and the Spirit Hosts I used an airbrush to get some preshading done before putting my ghostly contrast paints over it, but i'm a little less happy with the results. The pre-shading looked promising (you can see an example in the Knight of Shrouds at the bottom that I've yet to paint) but in practice I think the effect was a bit unfocused and messy. It turned out a lot better on the spirit hosts where I did a far lighter amount of preshading. The coached only looks passable to me, but it's saved a little by how busy the model itself is. Ah well, lessons learned!

But overall I'm quite happy with these guys, and proud of myself for cracking out this whole force in about two months. It is absolutely a personal record!

Example of my airbrush pre-shading on the Knight of Shrouds.